Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 13 Dec 2013 10:07:35 -0800 | Subject | Re: [PATCH 1/9] Known exploit detection | From | Kees Cook <> |
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On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 9:27 PM, Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> wrote: > On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 01:13:41PM -0800, Kees Cook wrote: >> > Suppose we put put this into the mainstream kernel. Wouldn't writers >> > of root kit adapt by checking for the kernel version to avoid checking >> > for exploits that are known not work? So the question is whether the >> > additional complexity in the kernel is going to be worth it, since >> > once the attackers adapt, the benefits of trying to detect attacks for >> > mitigated exploits will be minimal. >> >> This is already somewhat the case, but I think this idea still has >> value. The reality of the situation is that the kernels running on an >> end-user's system is rarely a stock upstream kernel. As a result, they >> usually have organization-specific versioning, which makes >> version-only autodetection useless to an attacker. > > Most organizations can't afford to have an in-house kernel team > providing specialized kernels for their server farms or their > customized desktop distributions. :-) > > Some places have publically said that they do this; Google has > publically talked about Goobuntu and their data center production > kernels, and some financial firms on Wall Street have boasted about > how they run with a customized kernel --- although other financial > firms have said they don't want to do that because they don't want to > void their support contract with Red Hat or SuSE. I suspect that at > most shopes, though, the latter is going to be far more common than > the former.
We can never really know, but given the evidence I've seen, there are a lot of custom kernels out in the world. That combined with the fact that sloppy attackers will still probe distro kernels, I think the argument that "attackers will fall back to other detection mechanisms" isn't strong enough to convince me that this series lacks value.
> Practically speaking, testing for various distribution kernel > versions, as well as specific ChromeOS and Android kernel versions, > wouldn't be that difficult for an attacker, and would probably allow > them to avoid detection for 99% of the Linux systems found in the > wild. It would certainly be useful for detecting attempted attacks > for private kernels where the configuration and security patches > applied for some internal kernel are not public --- and if that caused > the botnet author to be paranoid enough to avoid attacking machines > which didn't have a known distribution kernel that definitely had that > vulnerability, it would certainly be good for people running their own > privately maintained kernel image. So if this increases the market > demand for kernel programmers, that's a good thing, right? :-)
The careful attackers can successfully probe a system without needing uname at all. These patches won't help against them.
-Kees
-- Kees Cook Chrome OS Security
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